Attorney Aaron Hall

Take No Shortcuts When Planning Your Estate

It is important to leave no stone upturned when you are planning your estate. Some people put together some form of a makeshift estate plan without giving the matter much thought. These days, this is quite easily accomplished by using a tool that may be provided by an online marketer who sells generic legal documents…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Does a Revocable Living Trust Provide Asset Protection in Minnesota?

People sometimes buy into solutions that sound too good to be true, and this can enter the field of estate planning. Do-it-yourself legal forms are available on the Internet. Some companies offer estate planning devices like wills and revocable living trusts. There are many reasons why you may want to take pause before buying into…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Have You Really Read Your Estate Planning Documents?

Your estate plan is your chance to decide who gets what after you die. It may also impact your retirement as well as what happens in the event you become incapacitated. In short, your estate planning documents are some of the most important legal documents you will ever sign, but have you really read them?…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Protecting Your Special Needs Loved One in the Event of Your Death

If you have a child, parent, or other loved one who is a special needs individual, then you already know about the many challenges that come with caring for a special needs individual. Locating and paying for proper care can be very difficult. In fact, you may have spent months, even years, trying to get…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Protecting an Intended Beneficiary From His or Her Own Bad Decisions

It happens more often than you think—someone who is creating an estate plan cannot figure out how to provide for a loved one without risking the loss of all the assets left to the beneficiary because of the beneficiaries’ bad decisions. If that person is you, then you may wish to consider creating a trust…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Proceed with Caution if You Inherited an IRA

Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs, are commonly included in the estate assets of a decedent. If you have recently inherited an IRA, be sure that you proceed with caution to ensure that you get the most out of your inheritance. A beneficiary often makes the mistake of treating an inherited IRA the same way as…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Probate 101 – Definitions to Help You Through the Process

The loss of a loved one comes with a tremendous amount of grief and a considerable amount of practical work. When a person dies, his or her assets must usually go through probate. For anyone unfamiliar with the probate process, it can be confusing and intimidating. Familiarizing yourself with some of the common terms can…

Attorney Aaron Hall

What Is a Minnesota Family Limited Partnership?

In Minnesota and around the country family limited partnerships are used to provide people with asset protection and estate tax efficiency. Who is going to be looking for estate tax efficiency? To know whether or not you should be concerned you should understand the value of your estate in comparison to the amount of the…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Should I Have a Minnesota Durable Power of Attorney?

A comprehensive estate plan should address contingencies that you may be confronted with while you are alive.  One of these is the possibility of becoming incapacitated and unable to handle your own financial and medical decision making. Let’s say that you become incapacitated, and interested parties notice that you really can’t make sound decisions anymore….

Attorney Aaron Hall

Lifetime Gifting Can Be Part of Your Estate Plan

Those who are exposed to the federal estate tax are going to benefit from the implementation of tax efficiency strategies. Lifetime gifting can be part of the plan. The estate tax is unified with the gift tax. The unified lifetime exclusion is $5.25 million. As a result, if you gave $5.25 million in lifetime gifts…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Making the Most of Life Insurance

Life insurance is something that many people purchase at some point in their life. Often, an employer offers life insurance at a discounted group rate, making the purchase simpler and affordable. Once purchased, the average person doesn’t give life insurance another thought. Maybe you should though because life insurance can be an extremely versatile estate…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Lessons Learned From Celebrity Estate Challenges

As we all know, you can learn a lot from direct experiences and the experiences of others. Celebrity estate cases are well-publicized, and you can oftentimes take something away from these stories that can be useful to you personally. Last year we had a few interesting celebrity estate cases. One of them involves Sherman Hemsley, the…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Your Legacy – How to Pass it Down to Future Generations

You have undoubtedly heard the term “legacy” before, but you may not really know what it means. Actually, the term is rather vague and has numerous definitions depending on who you ask; however, the general idea is that your legacy is what you leave behind for future generations. It is a combination of your hopes…

Attorney Aaron Hall

How Large of an Estate can Pass Federal Estate Tax Free in Minnesota?

The federal estate tax carries a $5.49 million exclusion in 2017. This means that you can leave this much money to your beneficiaries without incurring any federal estate tax liability. Anything that you leave behind that exceeds this amount is potentially subject to a death tax that carries a 40% maximum rate. This $5.49 million…

Attorney Aaron Hall

The James Brown Estate

James Brown, known worldwide as the Godfather of Soul, died on Christmas Day 2006. Brown left behind six grown children, numerous grandchildren, and a questionably legal wife and new son. At the time of his death, he also left behind what appeared to be a fairly thorough estate plan that included a Last Will and…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Investment Strategy Changes that Warrant Estate Plan Changes

Many of America’s wealthier taxpayers are making significant changes to their investment plans as a result of the uncertainty regarding the fate of the Bush tax cuts as the year draws to a close. According to a poll conducted by Spectrem Group, alternative investments are making up a growing portion of the investment portfolios of…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Your Initial Estate Planning Consultation – Questions to Expect

The first time you sit down with an estate planning attorney you may feel as though you are on the proverbial “hot seat” given some of the questions your attorney is likely to ask. To put your mind at ease, it is important to understand first that all of your answers are confidential, meaning that…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Incapacity Planning – How to Keep a Stranger from Controlling You or Your Assets

Imagine letting your third cousin twice removed handle your financial affairs. Worse, can you imagine letting your ex-spouse make healthcare decisions for you? Although these are extreme examples, they are valid examples of what can happen if you become incapacitated without having an incapacity plan in place. While we all stand a better chance of…

Attorney Aaron Hall

How to Get Your Husband to the Estate Planning Attorney's Office

Even if your husband/partner is not typically a procrastinator, he may be procrastinating when it comes to the subject of estate planning. Not surprisingly, this may be a source of much frustration for you. Although women can certainly put off estate planning as well, men are more likely to do so. The reasons for this…

Attorney Aaron Hall

A Look At Generation Skipping Trusts

Generation-skipping trusts can provide a solution for high net worth families that are interested in implementing wealth preservation strategies. When you hear the term wealth preservation you may ask yourself why a “wealth preservative” as it were would be necessary. You have assets that you accumulated after you paid taxes all your life. They are…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Forbes Top Ten Earning Deceased Celebrities and What We Can Learn From Them

Forbes puts out a list of the Top 10 Earning Deceased Celebrities each year. These people are earnings millions…or rather their estates are…long after their death. While we don’t all have lucrative music or film contracts that provide for residual income, we can all learn something from these celebrities. With careful estate planning, and smart…

Attorney Aaron Hall

Final Arrangements: Record Your Preferences

Last year the legendary automotive icon Carroll Shelby passed away, and his final arrangements were not made until months after his death. He was married to his seventh wife at the time. He had children before entering that marriage. They contended that their father wanted to be cremated, and they said that they had documentation…

Attorney Aaron Hall

The Family Pack Rat Could Be Hiding A Fortune

Most families have one—the proverbial pack rat who saves everything. His or her garage/basement is likely stacked full of boxes full of “important” things. When the family pack rat dies, the families first inclination may be to hire someone to haul away all of that “stuff.” After all, it can’t possibly be worth anything right?…